A building's concrete slab/floor (hereinafter referred to as “slab”) is often the showpiece of a building and must be smooth and flat in order to safely support foot and vehicular traffic during the building's life. However, a building's concrete slab is usually poured and finished early on in a building's construction thereby subjecting the slab to a barrage of construction processes that damage the slab's finish physically and cosmetically. Such damages can be difficult or impossible to repair thereby leaving the finished building slab in a physically and/or cosmetically damaged state when the building is brand new.
A common construction process that subjects a concrete slab to substantial abuse is known as tilt-up or tilt-wall construction. Tilt-up or tilt-wall construction is a well-known approach to the construction of concrete buildings and structures. In general, tilt-wall construction involves the horizontal fabrication of concrete wall panels on a horizontal concrete casting bed, followed by the raising or tilting of the concrete wall panels into vertical orientations on top of a footing. For most tilt-wall construction, some (or substantially all) of a building's interior concrete slab is poured and finished to its finished grade prior to the casting of the wall panels with portions of the slab near the building's perimeter serving as the casting bed regions for the fabrication of concrete wall panels. The portion of the slab serving as the casting bed regions is subjected to heavy construction traffic and abuse during tilt-wall fabrication and erection operations. As a result, it is difficult or impossible to provide a high-quality-finish concrete slab that was previously used as a tilt-wall construction casting bed.